The 69th Calorimetry Conference (CALCON 2014) hold in Santa Fe (New Mexico, USA) opened today with Peter R. Tremaine (University of Guelph) receiving the “Hugh M. Huffman Memorial Award”. In his opening lecture he reviewed his research on modeling the behaviour of aqueous systems near the critical point; where many geological and industrial processes take place: from nuclear reactors to the origin of life.
In the plenary session Thomas Record (University of Wisconsin) discussed the effect of the Hofmeister series salts in the interaction with biopolymers and Randy Black (Quantum Design Inc) presented a new calorimetry cell for their measurement system to measure heats exchanges at mK temperature.
Micheael Henzl (University of Misouri) opened the “Macromolecule-Ligand Interaction” session presenting the study of the effect of mutations of Parvalbumin on its interaction with different ions. Parvalbumin is a vertebrate-specific protein believed to function primarily as cytosolic Ca2+ buffers. He showed global analysis of different ITC isotherms using a competitive binding model for Ca2+ and Mg2+ , when both ions are loaded in the syringe of the ITC equipment.
Cocaine-binding DNA aptamers have been developed for use in biosensor applications as they can be selected to bind almost any target with high specificity and affinity. Philip Johnson (York University) showed ITC competitive experiments between cocaine and quinine to explain the mechanism of binding with this DNA apatmers.
During the “Acid Folding and Interactions” session, different students from the Lewis Biophysics Laboratory (Mississippi State University) presented their works on the interaction of G-quadruplex DNA, one of the promising anti-cancer targets, with different ligands. They showed complex ITC isotherms with two inflexion points which they analysed with a binding model that takes into account three different events: the binding of the first ligand, the unfolding of the G-quadruplex DNA structure and the binding of a second ligand.
Tomorrow AFFINImeter will be in the poster session presenting the poster “AFFINImeter: A new tool to analyze Isothermal Titration Calorimetry experiments”. On Wednesday we will present an oral communication on the same topic during the “Global Analysis, Modeling and Simulations” session.